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The Pope can’t save Iraq’s Christians Having endured genocide and ISIS, the religious minority is fighting for survival

A member of the Iraqi forces walks past a mural depicting Pope Francis in Baghdad ahead of his visit. Photo by SABAH ARAR/AFP via Getty Images

A member of the Iraqi forces walks past a mural depicting Pope Francis in Baghdad ahead of his visit. Photo by SABAH ARAR/AFP via Getty Images


March 5, 2021   6 mins

When Pope Francis walks through the largely Christian town of Qaraqosh on Sunday he will tread on the very epicenter of where the horror of ISIS hit Iraq just seven years ago. The Pope’s trip, which starts today, is the first ever visit of a sitting pontiff to the country, the first attempt — by John Paul II — having been cancelled in 1999. Eighteen years after the US-led war unleashed multiple horrors on Iraq, the trip is supposed to give the country’s minorities a renewed sense of hope about the future, as well as fostering reconciliation between the country’s disparate communities. Yet while most of Qaraqosh’s residents have returned, elsewhere there remains little optimism among the dwindling number of Christians.

Today church bells ring once more across the plains surrounding Mosul, the country’s second city, but the wreckage of lives cut short, of shattered dreams and livelihoods, is felt all around the crumbling and charred homes of the Christians of Iraq. The terror group attracted the world’s attention when they took the city from a much larger and better equipped Iraqi army in 2014, but the extremist group had been active for several years under the guise of the Islamic State of Iraq; on 31 October 2010, six members had walked into a church in Baghdad and shot dead 50 worshippers, including a number of children. This was by no means unusual for the Islamic State, or Iraq’s religious violence at the time.

Their aim was to drive out the country’s Christians, who before the US-led invasion accounted for around 3-5% of the population, with large communities both in Baghdad and Mosul, although the largest concentration was in the region just outside the second city, the Nineveh Plains.

Most Iraqi Christians are ethnically Assyrian, possessing a discrete and little understood culture that reaches unbroken into pre-Christian antiquity. Their native language is Aramaic, which was once the dominant language of the region after being adopted as a lingua franca by the neo-Assyrian Empire, but which has slowly been edged out by Arabic. Having featured as prominent rules of the region, their ancestors also developed a Christian spiritual empire which spanned the entirety of Asia.

Iraq’s religious patchwork is complicated to outsiders because today Assyrians are divided into a number of sects, among them the Assyrian Church of the East, the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Syriac Catholic Church and Chaldean Catholic Church, the last of which is in communion with Rome. Iraqi Christians of all sects, however, are now more common in the diaspora than Iraq itself, given an unchecked sequence of genocide and persecution which began long before ISIS. There are around 150,000 Assyrians in Sweden, for example, far more than are left in Baghdad.

Following the Ottoman Empire’s genocide of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks in 1914-23, Assyrians were again targeted in the newly-formed state of Iraq — initially, a British-mandated territory bequeathed to a compliant Arab royal family after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Assyrians mainly remember the Hashemites as the family who led crowds celebrating the Iraqi Army after it had massacred thousands of unarmed Assyrian men, women and children in Simele in 1933. Britain, honouring the Anglo-Iraqi treaty signed in 1930, supplied the ammunition despite the fact that Assyrians, Britain’s allies, represented the largest cohort among the Iraqi Levies enlisted by Britain in the First World War.

It is a tragic, bitter history, but despite this the Assyrians cling on. In the coming days, the Pope, wandering through the ruins of Mosul and Qaraqush (Syriac Aramaic: Bakhdida), will see the last concentrated sites of Assyrian life in Iraq.

The inhabitants of these villages refer to themselves as suraye (or”‘Assyrians” in Aramaic), despite the best efforts of Saddam Hussein. Saddam’s Ba’ath party sought to homogenise Assyrians into “Iraqi Christians” according to a project which began first as a facet of pan-Arabism, but developing into a specifically Iraqi nationalism, with Saddam often depicting himself on billboards riding chariots alongside Babylonian kings. Assyrians who attended the Syriac and Chaldean Catholic Churches and who lived in urban communities were encouraged to take on Arab names and incorporate Arabic into their Church programmes, similar to other programmes of cultural eradication. Their religious leadership figures remained in the country throughout this process.

Yet, the Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East remained in exile after being expelled by the Iraqi leadership in 1933, leading his Church from Cyprus, Iran and the US. Rising sectarianism among Christians occurred in tandem with the incentives around easier social mobility, status and prestige afforded to those who rejected an Assyrian identity and were receptive to Arabisation. This was a defining feature of Ba’athist Arabisation policy and resulted in the Assyrian identity being effectively blacklisted.

The Pope’s visit will be aimed at fostering unity, in a country where Christianity has been framed as an essentially powerless and declining force since 2003, but there is a danger that it reinforces this trajectory by legitimising religious leaders who have helped that decline. The irony of modern Iraq is that while many Muslims are keen to form secular states, the country’s Christians have been pushed into religious-led rule.

Almost immediately after American tanks rolled into Iraq in 2003, Assyrians began to be targeted by extremist gangs in Baghdad and other cities. Dozens of churches were bombed, hundreds of people kidnapped or murdered; hundreds of thousands fled.

But Iraq’s minorities were preyed on not just by Sunni and Shia militias. As the centre weakened, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), strengthened by the US occupation, expanded into the Nineveh Plain unilaterally, blocking attempts by local Assyrians to form security forces and disenfranchising them politically. That expansion rendered the Assyrian homeland in the north of Iraq “disputed” by regional and federal authorities, ushering in a full decade of destabilisation which culminated in the emergence of ISIS. Echoing the Arabisation programmes of Saddam Hussein, the Kurdification project used the religious leadership of minority communities to promote a secular, nationalist agenda.

When Mar Meelis, a bishop from the Assyrian Church, arrived in Erbil from Australia in September 2014 and met with Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani, he reiterated “his gratitude and appreciation” for the role of the Peshmerga during the ISIS offensive against the Christians of the Nineveh Plain. Yet the Peshmerga had forcibly disarmed and then abandoned these Christians and Yazidis to genocide without a fight only a month prior. Likewise with Chaldean Archbishop of Erbil Bishop Warda, who has become seen as a figurehead for Iraq’s Christians, and was invited to the White House for the signing ceremony of House Res. 390 which provided relief for Iraqi minorities.

The preoccupation of privileging religious leaders as figureheads of non-Muslim communities is itself a relic of the Ottoman millet system. While Arabs and Kurds attempt to develop political structures independent of tribal or religious authority in order to run modern states, their non-Muslim subjects are chained to antiquated systems which prevent them from doing the same. This provides Muslim rulers with powerless minority religious leaders who they ventriloquise, and sometimes even appoint directly.

The US shift in policy during the Trump administration complemented this system, effectively reviving the millet system for the 21st century. Resources once channelled through the UN, which was not without its own major problems, now went through USAID and approved “faith-based groups”.

When it comes to the Middle East, much is made of sectarianism among Muslim groups, but little is mentioned about the sectarianism encouraged within minority communities, incentivised through sect-based policy solutions (what in the West would be called “hard multiculturalism”). Beyond Arab and Kurdish elites creating minority political parties with a sectarian slant to break up any prospect of a unified minority agenda, there are stories of local priests punishing volunteers for distributing Western aid to Christians of different sects, despite being neighbours. One US contact in Iraq candidly remarked that the US had recently provisioned millions of dollars for various infrastructure projects and decided to simply “give it to Bishop Warda”.

In Iraq the most important issue is security. When ISIS rampaged through Mosul and the Nineveh Plains tens of thousands of Assyrians  fled, yet most of those refugees will not return to those villages where they do not feel safe. In the Peshmerga-controlled village of Telskuf, only 30% of people have returned post-ISIS, and in Telkaif, run by Iraqi Arab militias, only 7% have come back. In contrast  Qaraqush has welcome the return of some 70% of its people, because here the local community is protected by the Assyrian-led Nineveh Plain Protection Units (NPU) — which is also contributing to the Pope’s own security. When it comes to security, people vote with their feet, and yet church leaders say no to so-called “Christian militias”.

Unsurprisingly Assyrians are deeply pessimistic, and as one displaced man told a reporter ahead of the visit, “We’re expecting the Pope. But we’re not expecting much from his visit.” Far from renewing hopes, Pope Francis’s visit represents something of an emblem of the political situation Christian Assyrians find themselves locked into in Iraq: pitifully hanging onto 20th century dreams of salvation from outside forces who have even less at stake in fulfilling them. Local religious leaders will treat the visit as a vindication of their own faith and position, while the lay folk stay huddled around fast-depleting kerosene heaters for warmth in ever-dwindling numbers.

As for the Americans? For all of the recent bluster and rhetoric around helping these stricken people to the tune of $400m, the US is still spending more on building a new $600m consulate near Erbil in 2017, to go along with their existing $750m consulate in Baghdad.

Until these communities can be supported to strengthen their position, they will remain sub-citizens. Arabs and Kurds enjoy the benefits of expanding their educational and professional networks secure in their own identities, but Assyrians are primarily understood through one single framework — their ability to practise a faith shared by those looking on in the West. Current measures undertaken now may provide some short-term gloss and flatter efforts, but the Catholic Church (and all Churches in the region) are ultimately weakened in the long term unless something drastic changes — because current trends suggest that there will soon be more Christmas trees than Christians in Iraq.

The Pope will greet a broken community fighting for its existence when he arrives in Iraq. The least that he and the machinery around him can do is recognise the ones who are defending it best — the beleaguered and forgotten people themselves.

Views expressed belong to the author and do not reflect the position of Minority Rights Group International


Max J. Joseph is an artist and writer who has published widely on the Middle East. He is currently the Iraq Programme Coordinator for Minority Rights Group International

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Galeti Tavas
Galeti Tavas
3 years ago

Phase two. In the 1960s Jews were in every part , city, big town, and even had their own towns, of the MENA from Afghanistan to Morocco. That is over, driven out.

The Christians have been very hard done – and I think a huge problem is a sort of Wokeness, which has been a force at least since the 1980s, a force which made it unpopular to give special attention to Christians, we might be thought prejudice against the Muslim majority….this would be a problem locally, and back at home.

But it all goes back to post WWI and the ending of the Ottomans and Faisal. The entire region was Feudal then, all the lands and towns owned by the traditional leaders, and the unwinding of that by the British and French post WWI, was done so poorly, and then post WWII the will to interfere was pretty much gone. The change from feudal to democracy seems to be killing or driving off the king, (1958 in Iraq, 1979 in Iran and Afghanistan, Yemen 1962, 1953 Egypt) and the rise of Strong Men, and it never works well. There is a great lot of good in having a Monarchy, and bad chaos when it falls – Morocco and Jordan, KSA, Emir of Kuwait, remain stable with their Kings. If Faisal had not had his head cut off (so I heard) in 58, and the other Royalty had hung on, the region would be stable now. The mad Brits wanting to end their monarchy need to remember this, no matter how utterly appalling Markle is.

Allons Enfants
Allons Enfants
3 years ago
Reply to  Galeti Tavas

The change from feudal to democracy seems to be killing or driving off the king, (1958 in Iraq, 1979 in Iran and Afghanistan, Yemen 1962, 1953 Egypt) and the rise of Strong Men, and it never works well.

Russia’s change to USSR is another good example for the pitfalls of bypassing the organic process from feudalism to democracy.
Good post.
And good article too!

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
3 years ago
Reply to  Galeti Tavas

The problem with the Hashemite Kings of Iraq was that they were Saudis implanted by the British. They never had popular support. Of course this is not normally a problem in feudal societies where the right to rule is either claimed as given by God or won on the battlefield. The Kings of Iraq did not show the same mettle as their cousins in Jordan and were overthrown.

Eric Blair
Eric Blair
3 years ago
Reply to  Galeti Tavas

“In the 1960s Jews were in every part , city, big town, and even had their own towns, of the MENA from Afghanistan to Morocco. That is over, driven out.”

Not forgetting, of course, Palestinians being driven from their ancestral land in 1948 and the ongoing fallout from that event. Or does that not count because the displaced are not of the Judeo-Christian persuasion?

Can the mess in the MENA region ever be solved? Is it simply a zero-sum battle for domination in which the strong crush the weak and impose their will on them? That’s more or less what’s been, and still is, happening there. But if one only gets outraged when one’s own family or ancestors are victimized while ignoring, or even supporting, the same type of atrocities when the shoe is on the other foot, well, there will just be more violence and death until a cataclysmic war produces a definitive victor (or a stalemate until a rematch is fought and the cycle continues).

Something I’ve noticed reading articles here and at other sites that push back against the prevailing liberal order. I get the sense that many, though certainly not all, authors and commentators there who write about geopolitical issues are in denial about their bias towards the West aka “Greater Europe.” They don’t say it directly but it’s implied that Western civilization is superior to other civilizations that currently exist.

There is nothing wrong with being fond of Western civilization but imperial expansion is in the Western DNA and when such a civilization feels it is superior to the rest, conflict is never far away.

For example, there is a whole slate of articles here at UnHerd about the “rise of China” and how China seeks to dominate this and that. Well, sure, it’s a civilization state of a billion+ people and it is bound to have significant influence in the world. But the West is terrified that if it loses its hegemonic hold on the world some other power, namely China, will step in and extend its military, economic and cultural influence into every last nook and cranny on Earth. China panic is all the rage these days.

But maybe this is just paranoid projection on a grand scale. After all, in recent history it’s only the West, and perhaps some currents of Islam, that have been obsessed with “full-spectrum dominance” and subjugating the entire planet. As it currently stands only the NATO countries send their armies to wage offensive wars thousands of miles away from their borders (and justify it with hilarious claims of altruism and “bringing freedom” to the downtrodden, because that’s what empires do).

If belligerence and selective, and utterly hypocritical, moral condemnation that ignores the transgressions of one’s own preferred “side” is the only way Westerners can deal with their civilization’s decline (the whole “woke” madness and the utter incompetence regularly on display in the US and EU, e.g. the Covid debacle, isn’t a sign of decline I don’t know what is) then the world in the near future is going to be an extremely bleak place.

If current trends continue, it’s just a matter of time before a major conflict breaks out in the Middle East and with China. Can the US-led West cooperate with countries like Russia, China and Iran and seek to find mutually acceptable resolutions to their differences, or is military and economic domination the only tool the West knows how to use?

Similarly, when looking at the MENA region, can Western observes accept their countries’ roles in fueling the violence and ethnic/religious conflicts in the region – and try to understand them from different perspectives – or is an aggressive, hubris driven, false morality that positions the Judeo-Christian West as inherently superior to the other players the only perspective Westerners are willing to entertain?

Glyn Reed
Glyn Reed
3 years ago
Reply to  Eric Blair

I find your comment puts forward the common perception that is held today. ie. ‘ imperial expansion is in the Western DNA and when such a civilization feels it is superior to the rest, conflict is never far away’ This is certainly the perspective that is found acceptable at universities, colleges and school and most of the media. We only have to think of the outcry directed at Nigel Bigger to see that anyone who tries to bring nuance is shot down in flames and their career put on the line. However, obviously expansionism is not unique to the West or to Christianity although the West had their time of ascendency. History tells of other expansionist empires and imperialistic ventures. The story of islamic imperialism is absolutely fascinating.
Many come to Unherd to read and learn from other perspectives that don’t always make the cut for the prevailing ‘accepted’ narrative of the main news media. As you will see in the comment below, some readers of this article are unaware of the horror of persecution and ethnic cleansing that some of the world’s most vulnerable people are facing today.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
3 years ago

The final destruction of the Christian Church in Mesopotamia is mainly the result of the recent antics of the “village idiot from Texas”, George W Bush Jnr. Bravo!

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago

Even worse, George WMD Bush was always banging on about his own Christianity while, as you say, ensuring the final destruction of Christianity in parts of the ME. Where do they find these people and why must so many suffer for their imbecility?

Glyn Reed
Glyn Reed
3 years ago

Much of what is happening to Christian minorities across the Muslim world finds its root not only in the obscene war of Bush and Blair but also in the anti-western rhetoric that has been spewed out by our press and academe for decades now. The notion of the West and Christianity are interchangeable in many countries. Despite the fact that the Assyrian Christian population’s roots predate the arrival of Islam, Christians bear the brunt of the anti-western hatred and resentment.
Meanwhile, across the West that same academe is intent on ‘purifying’ our own history. We now have Mayor Khan leading a delegation that will judge the statues of long dead men and decide whether their actions hundreds of years ago merit their memorials remaining in place and universities seek to decolonise their curricula and expunge British wrong doing.
All fine some might say, but not when it blocks from view the bloody and aggressive, imperialist histories of other countries and religions. When it does that it becomes dangerous for it legitimises and anti-western or anti-christian mindset.
There is no doubt that the role of the British elite in slavery was beyond disgusting but the more it became known about the greater the pressure there was for it to be out-lawed until it was ultimately abolished.
The problem with initiatives such as that led by Mayor Khan is that we know slavery still exists in the world today, that some 40 million people struggle under its yoke, There are at least 2 million bonded slaves in Pakistan alone. This all begs the question, why are people like Sadiq Khan not using their positions of privilege and influence to bring change where it would make the most difference to the living?
Again, with those pressing for islamophobia to become a hate crime in this country – it already is but many want it specified – they largely remain utterly silent about the brutal persecution and massacre of Christians that is taking place today.
This is an excellent article on a matter that truly does go unheard by many.
It is tragic that the present and future for the Assyrian Christians is so utterly bleak.

Last edited 3 years ago by Glyn Reed
Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
3 years ago
Reply to  Glyn Reed

I couldn’t agree more.
Our own, frankly pretentious liberalism’ attitude to these outrages is a National disgrace.

Last edited 3 years ago by Charles Stanhope
David Owsley
David Owsley
3 years ago
Reply to  Glyn Reed

Good comment; I almost misread the whole thing by missing the first two words “Much of…” and was just about to fly off on a rant about the centuries of trouble in the region…

Paul N
Paul N
3 years ago
Reply to  Glyn Reed

You ask: “why are people like Sadiq Khan not using their positions of privilege and influence to bring change where it would make the most difference to the living?“, and you refer to “at least 2 million bonded slaves in Pakistan”.
I agree with your criticisms of slavery around the world, but surely if he campaigned on slavery in Pakistan he would be criticised there and elsewhere for “imperialist” attempts to dictate to other countries, and urged to set his own house in order first? Whataboutery is not constructive, but it’s very real.
And yes, we seem as a country sadly blind to the problems faced by Christian minorities around the world (and not just in Islamic states).

Glyn Reed
Glyn Reed
3 years ago
Reply to  Paul N

I disagree entirely. It is not whataboutery to attempt to throw the fact of modern day slavery into focus especially when there is an exercise being undertaken to condemn historic, long dead people with connections to slavery as if it was something that doesn’t taint the modern world we live in. Why would Sadiq Khan be accused of imperialism were he to speak against it? That doesn’t make any sense to me I am afraid.

Last edited 3 years ago by Glyn Reed
Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago

Because the Arab world previously loved Christians and other non-Muslims? Give me a break. A large swath of the Western left would be delighted to do elsewhere what is happening in Iraq.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

No off course not!
As you imply Arab/Muslims are taught to detest Christians and other deviants from birth.

However at least the Pagan, Saddam Hussein did not encourage them to slaughter Christians as a matter of routine.

Thanks to the ‘village idiot from Texas’ aided and abetted the by the Blair creature, which resulted in the virtual destruction of the country the ideal conditions for a wholesale massacre of Christians became possible.

Andrea X
Andrea X
3 years ago

Am I the only one who knew absolutely NOTHING about all this and got lost while reading this article?

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
3 years ago
Reply to  Andrea X

No, I think not. You are but one among millions, so no need to worry!

David Owsley
David Owsley
3 years ago
Reply to  Andrea X

No, sadly not.

Glyn Reed
Glyn Reed
3 years ago
Reply to  Andrea X

Like so much else that is inconvenient to address, the persecution of Christian and other religious minorities in many countries around the world (around 40) has been kept well away from the broadcast news and most of the press. Even many in the church appear ignorant as to its reality. It is truly shameful.

J B
J B
3 years ago

Whilst this is not news to some, most are completely unaware. Mainstream news seems to be restricted to the plight of those who, in the grand scheme of things, are pretty well off. I’ll make sure to share.

johntshea2
johntshea2
3 years ago

Interesting, but:-
“Eighteen years after the US-led war unleashed multiple horrors on Iraq…”
Everything having been just dandy before then, of course! Would the author really want Sadaam Hussein back? And the UN sanctions critics loudly alleged were killing 100,000 Iraqi children each year?
And the US “Consulate” in Baghdad is of course an embassy.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
3 years ago
Reply to  johntshea2

‘We’ had been very happy to use/succour Saddam during his seven years war with the Iranian Ayatollahs, had we not?

As for his harsh treatment of the blessed Kurds and Marsh Arabs, was that any different to countless other tin pot Dictators littering the planet?

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
3 years ago

I like the picture of the Pope in that poster. They’ve somehow made him look like an Ayatollah. Got a ring to it – Ayatollah Francis.

Peadar Laighléis
Peadar Laighléis
3 years ago
Reply to  Prashant Kotak

It isn’t worse than some of the things his opponents within the Catholic Church call him.

G Matthews
G Matthews
3 years ago

I find it curious that nobody ever compares the Arab conquest of the Roman Empire lands in the middle east and north Africa to the European conquest of South and North America. One is now a targeted by a globalist movement for destruction, but nobody challenges the legitimacy of Arabs in say Algeria. Not to mention China where the process of imperial expansion is still in progress today.